The Victorious Difference
by timelordsinconverse
Summary: Rose Tyler is in Pete's World, starting her job in Torchwood. The Doctor is gone and she is upset, but she's getting better. Somewhat. And then she sees an odd entry for a new alien. An alien who looks suspiciously familiar. A timelord.
1. Chapter 1

Rose walked into Torchwood with her usual cup of morning coffee, yawning. She waved good morning to Jake, who had returned from France with Mickey the previous week. He smiled and then returned to whatever report he had to write up about the cyber factories there.

Jackie and Pete were standing in the main room, arguing in hushed voices. Still, Jackie had never been good about keeping her voice down—Rose heard it before she even entered the room, and her steps slowed. Were they fighting already? A frown tugged down at the corners of her lips. She had thought her mum would be too thrilled to have Pete back—riches and everything—to start anything. She was flashing back to the day of the wedding when she had witnessed their fighting, right before he died.

"—telling you, Jacks. We can't just keep it a secret. I mean, how are we—"

"No, I am telling you, Pete Tyler. You saw what Rose was like after he left, and we are _not _giving her any false hope. That isn't him, you've seen the Doctor. It's some weird—"

She broke off when she spotted Rose loitering at the door. For a moment her face looked stressed, and then she was across the room with open arms, hugging Rose tightly.

"Rose, darling, I called and told you to sleep in. What are you doing here?" Rose's confusion grew, and she pulled back.

"Yeah, I was sleeping until you called, and then I figured I might as well come in, since I was awake." She couldn't just sit around all day. It wasn't what the Doctor would want her to do, and she could not physically do it, despite her mother wanting her to do so. There had been a week where she'd been too paralyzed by the pain of losing the Doctor to do anything, and then she had to be busy. It was a physical need, just as important as water and food. "Something wrong?"

"There's um—" Pete broke off, glancing at Jackie, who returned his look with a glare. "Nothing. Nothing new."

Rose nodded, setting her coffee cup on her work station. "You sure? It sounded like you two were fighting about something."

"Oh, I keep telling him we need to find new house staff. I can't clean that whole house by myself, and I don't want to, either. He's just too busy with the cybermen to care."

"Right, and I'll get right on staff. As soon as possible."

Something was definitely off. She sat down in front of her computer and logged in, scanning through the email she had created. It was for anyone who needed help with the cybermen, aliens, whomever. Pete had advised against it, said there was no way she could keep up with all the people who thought they were seeing aliens, but Rose persisted onwards with it.

"Okay."

"You haven't, you know, seen anyone you thought you recognized lately, have you, Rose?" Jackie asked after a pause.

"No, mum. This is an alternate Earth, and anyone I might've known probably got converted into a cyberman." She replied distractedly. Once Jackie was gone, she'd have to poke around and figure out what she was hiding. Until then, there was work to get done.

"Right. Of course. Just checking. You know, I did run into Cheryl, mind you, she barely even recognized me, since we haven't lived in that old flat since your father got rich and…" Jackie's words faded into background noise as Rose scrolled through the emails detailing everything from newly discovered cyberman factories to someone's dog or cat that went missing. She nodded every once in a while as Jackie continued on, and Pete disappeared.

Eventually, Jackie left to head home, and possibly put out an ad for house staff for the house. She and Torchwood didn't quite click, probably because Jackie's experiences with adventure constituted of worrying about whether Rose would make it out alive. Now she had to worry about Pete and Mickey too.

The moment her mother disappeared, Rose left the computer and walked over to the records computer. Everything that entered and exited Torchwood that was of alien nature was catalogued on the computer. Biting her lip, she scrolled through several records of random alien machinery, debris from some space craft crash.

There was nothing interesting, except one of the entries was blocked. There weren't a lot of those.

**ALIEN LIFE FORM UNKNOWN ORIGIN**

The details couldn't be accessed without a password, and Rose's didn't have the clearance to view details.

"_You saw what Rose was like when he left. We are not giving her any false hope."_

Her heart rate sped up. Could it be?

Suddenly, she was certain. It was him. It was the Doctor, he'd somehow found his way through the dimensions and he was in Torchwood somewhere. He'd found her.

She left the monitor and walked across to the security monitors. Each one showed a different room of Torchwood. Rose skimmed through each one, clicking through each individual video feed with increasing quickness.

_Where was he? _

He had to be there. There was no one else her mum could have been talking about. No one else that she would have wanted to keep secret from Rose.

The fuzzy image of the alien holding cells came up, and she hesitated. Through one of the glass cells there was a tall figure. His features were blurred out by lack of quality. Rose leaned in closer, trying to make them out.

"Whatcha looking at?"

She flinched backwards guiltily and spun to look at Pete, who looked both uncomfortable and uneasy.

"That's—that's, is that him? That's the Doctor, isn't it?" She jabbed a finger at the screen. Pete's expression intensified.

"Rose—"

"Oh my God, it is." Her eyes were starting to fill with tears.

"Rose, it's…" Pete looked at the display. "Your mum'll kill me if she finds out I'm telling you this, so you didn't hear it from me, yeah?"

She waited for him to speak.

"We found him after we got a call. And it looks like him, it does. I know. But when you talk with him, you know." He lapsed into silence and Rose's frustration grew.

"You know what? That's either the Doctor, or it's not. Which is it?"

Right when she was getting ready to scream, Pete found his words again. "Just leave it be, Rose. We'll take care of things."

"What's that supposed to _mean_?" She asked in a raised voice, glancing back at the screen, where the figure was pacing around.

But Pete was already beating a retreat for the door, obviously avoiding the subject.


	2. Chapter 2

The Victorious walked around his cells. Every so often he stopped in front of the door and slammed his fists into it, testing to see if he had somehow missed some weakened spot that would grant him release. There was no such breach in his cell, however.

If he still had that sonic, then he could get out. But somehow the humans that captured him had known he had one, which should have been highly unlikely. The odds had simply been against him, and it was making him very, very angry.

First they found him, mid-mission. Then they knocked him out with alien technology they shouldn't have had, and then he woke up in a cell without any of his things.

He was so not amused.

Footsteps sounded down the hall, and he got up once more to hover near the door of the cell. He wouldn't give them the pleasure of hearing him ask to be let out, but if one of them got close enough—the fate of his fellow Timelords would look like a happy ending.

A girl stopped outside his cell. She was short, blond, and sort of worn-out looking. Her eyes were still hinting the red of recent tears.

"Doctor?" Her hand flew to her mouth as she regarded him with wide eyes. He stared back, refusing to speak. He'd heard about Torchwood. Any information given to them they would chew up and spit back out as some useful tool for the human race to destroy each other and everything around them even sooner than they were set up to. "Oh my god, it's like…" Her eyes were filling with tears as she stepped closer.

_Wait for it… wait for it…_

Her feet were carrying her closer, closer than any of the other employees had dared come. They could sense the danger on him, they knew he would not hesitate to kill them. Why the human girl would have no such inhibitions was a mystery to him.

She was close enough that he could have reached out and touched her, if the little holes in the plexiglass walls were any larger.

_One more step…_

He surged forward, slamming into the wall as hard as he could. The entire thing shook and the girl let out a little shriek and almost fell in her hurry to get out of his way.

"I am the Timelord Victorious. And you're going to let me out or I am going to destroy this entire institute." He snarled.

She was really going to cry. Pathetic. But that was humans, weak even in their power. Unable to get a hold on their emotions and crush them down where they belonged, out of sight.

"You look just like him." She was saying, interrupting his thoughts. The tears weren't running a surrender down her face like he had imagined. No, she was actually stepping closer again.

"It's like—"

"Rose? Rose, what've you gone and got up to?" The girl turned. "Rose! What're you doing back here?" It was the obnoxious blond. He had no idea how she had managed to get onto a Torchwood team, every part of her bleach blonde hair and overdone makeup screamed normal housewife.

Rose hadn't even opened her mouth to get a word out, the obnoxious one was pushing her out. The Timelord Victorious watched them with cold eyes. He would find a way out. Somehow.

"—and I told you that nothing was going on, so why on earth would you go back there? It's not like you needed to be, and I know that I—"

"Mum, will you please shut up. Just shut up." Anger was starting to raise up within Rose, enough that she ignored the hurt look on Jackie's face. Her gaze was fixed on a wall decidedly far away from Jackie's face. "How come you didn't just tell me?" Jackie opened her mouth, but Rose cut her off before she could say anything. She wouldn't get a word in edgewise otherwise. "I know you think I'm all fragile since he's gone. But I work here, and I've got the right to know. You keep trying to protect me. I don't need protecting."

She'd needed it back at Torchwood, when she was trying to hold onto that damned lever. Right then was when she needed the Doctor the most, and that had been the one time that he could not be there to save her.

"You're different now Rose. I worry about you."

"I don't want your worry, mum. I just want to be left alone." Rose muttered, still refusing to meet Jackie's eyes.

"See, you're starting to sound like he did, you know that? I told you I was worried about what was going to happen to you when I was gone because you were changing, and now look at you. Just like I said. You're changing, Rose. And I don't like it, not one bit. I know the Doctor was important, he helped save us. But you've got to get over him eventually."

"You don't understand, though. It's not that simple." Rose didn't want to talk. She wanted to go back to that cell and figure out who the alien who looked just like her Doctor was and why he was in that cell.

Jackie fell silent, resorting to a disapproving look that Rose missed and a disapproving sigh that she ignored.

"You've got to face the facts sometime, Rose. He's not coming back." She got up from the chair she had been sitting in and walked off, leaving Rose to slouch down and fidget with one of the pens on the desk. She looked upwards, diverting the tears welling in her eyes. She had promised herself she would stop crying. She wouldn't be the helpless crying damsel.

Out in the hallway she could hear the faint raised voice of Jackie and lowered voice of Pete as they argued about yet another thing. It was getting to be a bit of a regular thing, though their arguments usually ended with Pete returning with a bouquet of flowers or jewelry and gaining Jackie's forgiveness.

They were completely stupid to think they could leave her alone in the room and expect her to stay there. She was up and across the room in seconds, and back into the cell block in even less time. Except they'd be able to get in and she needed time to talk to the Doctor's lookalike. She already had her theories, but she was going to need to verify them.

Pete wasn't going to be happy. Neither was Jackie, for that matter, but it was hard to pinpoint one instance where she was perfectly happy. Something was always bothering her.

Rose walked over to the lockdown lever and stared at it for a moment. It was small, and reminded her of the fire alarms scattered around her old school. It was a measure put in place in case anything escaped, or there was a live cyberman spotting, that being the most important use. They had been sucked into the void, but there was the occasional straggler that had been left behind in Pete's world that needed to be stopped. That was why Jake and Mickey had been in France again, to ensure that there had been no live cybermen left.

She pulled the alarm, and immediately the room's lights lowered to red alarm lights and an alarm began blaring. That would give her some time to talk to the Timelord Victorious, as he'd called himself.

There was no time to waste, though.

Looking into his cell again was a fresh shock. This wasn't a lookalike contest, the man before her could have been the Doctor. His clothes were different, darker—a leather vest filled with pockets and a crisscross of straps across his torso that must have held swords or guns, or perhaps some other alien technology. A pendant hung from his neck and contained a large, flat stone. It was odd, something inside the stone almost looked like it was moving.

"If you've come to do anything other than let me out, you're going to need to think again." He said in a low voice, glancing up at her. For a moment Rose got lost in a dark brown of them, and she had to pull herself back to present.

"I'm not letting you out, not yet. I want to answer some questions, and—and you're going to answer them if you think you're coming anywhere close to get out. Okay?"

A smirk spread across his face as he stared at her. "Ooh, the human girl's getting brave, isn't she? You're not going to cry anymore, then?" The smirk darkened into a sneer.

"_Okay_?" Rose repeated, swallowing to keep her voice from shaking. She was unnerved just how dark the man before her was. He was an alternate Doctor, she was fairly certain about that. But how had he gotten so dark and twisted? What had happened in his timeline that created two men that were such apparent polar opposites?

He leaned back on the bench in his cell. "Fine. Ask your questions. Just remember, the longer I have to wait, the more impatient I get. You're not going to like me impatient."

"Yeah, okay. Got it." Rose crossed her arms. "Now, what are you?"

"I'm an alien, didn't you realize?" He replied in a mock-innocent voice, widening his eyes as his sneer widened. Rose chose to ignore it.

"No, but you said you were a Timelord, is that true? You're from the planet Gallifrey, yeah?"

That got his attention.

"No."

But he spit the word out to fast, too aggressively.

"Alternate universe, so there's got to be an alternate Gallifrey." Rose raised an eyebrow. "So did that one burn too?" She mused to herself.

"Of course it burned, they all burned. Every version burned, that was how the Moment worked." He snarled. It was an unexpected answer.

"Okay. Got it. All Gallifreys burned. And what're you doing here?"

He didn't answer.

Rose repeated the question.

Still, silence.

"Fine. I'll figure that out later, then." She muttered, fidgeting with the edge of her sleeve as she searched the jail block. Perhaps the walls held answers to her questions. Or different questions that would get the Victorious to talk. "Look, I'll let you out, but we need to come to an understanding. You don't try anything, and you answer my questions, yeah?"

"Yeah." He repeated sullenly, slouching even further on the bench. Rose stepped forward and swiped her key card. The door slid open, and the Victorious was up and across the cell in moments. Rose flinched back a step or two, unnerved by his sudden speed.

"Okay, yeah, that's good right there. Stay there. And no—no sudden movements." How was it possible? He even had the same freckling pattern across the bridge of his nose and cheeks. "Now, answer my question. Why are you here?"

He stared down at her with unreadable eyes, and Rose waited. Part of her was willing him to make a move, to try something. She wanted him to slam her backwards into the wall and make a run for it. At least that burst of physical pain she could control and process.

"You."


	3. Chapter 3

Rose blinked and tried to fathom the dark depths of his eyes.

"Sorry?"

"Yeah, no, that's really not working out for me." He darted forward faster than Rose could react. Pain exploded in the back of her head as she stared up at the ceiling, confused as to how she had gotten there. The pendant dangled before her eyes, and it was, indeed moving.

"This is a little window into the time vortex, in case you were wondering, Rose. It's hard enough for a Time Lord to look into it, do you know what happens when humans do?" He sneered down at her, as her eyes focused fully on the pendant.

There were circles of infinity inside it. She could see bits and pieces of time itself, and it felt strangely familiar…

It was no small feat to screw her eyes closed and push away the sudden images of brilliant gold energy bubbling in her thoughts. The Doctor had saved her from a similar fate, now his alternate self was forcing her back down that road. She wouldn't give in, though the blue circles swirled with gold and a thousand other alternating colors still flashed behind her eyes in a ghostly afterimage. Everything had grown a little fuzzy around the edges.

The pendant was there, it was waiting, and if she just opened her eyes…

It might be easier. Just to give in and pretend he was her doctor in those few seconds before the time vortex drove her over the edge and she spilled into a world where being left behind and bored with day-to-day life would be meaningless.

She could feel her eyelids relaxing, and part of her was already screaming.

No, she couldn't just go out like that. Not without a fight.

So she relaxed and allowed herself to open her eyes as she raised a hand and smacked the piece of jewelry from the Victorious. His hiss of rage seared against her skin as he reached out to grab for it, and the brief exposure to that stream of time left Rose's head reeling once more.

She rolled away from him, but one desperate hand fastened onto her wrist as she struggled to get to her feet, to get to the door. It had been a bad decision to see him alone, especially after ensuring all the doors were locked from the outside.

_Brilliant job, Rose. _Rose yanked at his hand, trying to pry his fingers apart and failing. Her eyes measured a quick path around the room. Nothing to use for a weapon—it was the prison block, after all. Torchwood would be stupid to provide any weapons in the area.

He was up as well, searching the floor to find where the pendant had skittered off to.

Rose spotted it first.

She lunged forward with a half-formed plan and a burst of adrenalin. Her fingers closed around the chain as he followed her trail, the grip on her wrist suddenly lost in the unexpected burst of movement.

Rose grabbed the stone and then twisted around as he wrapped his arms around her waist.

For a moment, a flashback overwhelmed her.

_Staring out at the hallway, unable to move while under the spell of both fascination and fear. And then those familiar hands around her waist, pulling her out of danger and into safety. Turning to look at him, a little bit breathless, the whisper of 'thanks' caught in her throat as he turned to focus on other immediate problems._

By then he was over top of her, and his hands were around her throat.

Rose's eyes widened in surprise and her own hands drifted in a confused gesture—unsure whether to protect the pendant or try to stop the sudden pressure at her neck.

The more immediate self-preservation won over and she released the pendant to claw at his hands with increasingly weaker movements.

Somewhere Rose could hear Jackie shouting hysterically. Pete saying something in a low rushed voice.

They were trying to save her.

But that wasn't right, was it?

Her Doctor was the one who was supposed to save her.

Her Doctor…


	4. Chapter 4

The Victorious watched the vitality drain from the Rose girl with grim pleasure. Something in her eyes unnerved him. They were almost familiar, as though he had seen her somewhere before. He didn't like the feelings she was stirring up in him.

Something was going to have to be done about that.

He glanced up as one of the other humans began to bang on the door—the woman, no doubt. She was already hysterical, and he hadn't even fully escaped yet.

The pendant disappeared into his pocket and he turned in a slow circle as he surveyed the room.

It had been prisoner-proofed, but it was still something that had been thrown together in a hurry. There was money behind it, sure, or the jail cells would have been broom closets, not barred cells. The room itself, however, was not escape proof, and the locker of his things was across the room. That meant he had all the tools he needed.

The Victorious smirked as he walked over to the little storage locker and kicked it. And kicked it again.

With several well-aimed blows, the door was malformed enough that he could sneak a couple fingers through a gap and find his laser screwdriver. Once that was out, the lock was done for.

In moments all the Victorious's weapons and knick knacks were back in his pockets. He turned his screwdriver to the barred window, and each cylinder of stainless steel clattered to the ground, one after the other.

Then he hoisted up the still unconscious Rose, and shoved her unceremoniously through the window. He followed with the cries of the hysterical woman still echoing in his ears.

Idiot humans. A high-class security system was only useful when the building was escape-proof. They had effectively trapped themselves from Rose, and it had done them no favors.

He leaned down and picked Rose back up, slinging her over one shoulder with some difficulty, and then set off towards the TARDIS.

Time to figure out what exactly he was going to do to her as thanks for the difficulty she had caused him.

Although she had let him out, perhaps that meant he would keep her alive for some time. That could be amusing.


End file.
